Harald mentions in passing: for instance, the transition team has briefly considered the option of making "permanent institutional memory" in the form of archives a separate task that is carried out outside the present "secretariat" framework - since Carl's reports indicate that this task may need a different skillset, and different resources, than the secretariat currently has. is there a requirement for the IETF to agrre that NeuStar take over all of the current Foretec funstions? It seems to me that providing mailing list services (along with the archives of them) is a quite separable function - there are a number of companies in that business. I'd like to see a RFP be developed for the mailing list function and that bids be solicited for it - NeuStar could bid on the RFC if they felt that they have the expertise but I see no reason to think that they would automatically be the best choice. In the long run I'd like the IETF to move away from having a single vendor for all of our support services (ignoring for the moment the RFC Editor and IANA which are already seperate) - it puts too much dependency in one place and assumes that expertise in, for example, meeting managment automatically translates into expertise in other areas such as mailing list management. Scott _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf